Annet Couwenberg

Jennifer Angus

“We don’t have very many ‘Wow!’ moments anymore in this age of Internet. We’ve become a bit jaded,” says Angus, “I am trying to capture in my work the magic we experience as children. I would like people to discover it once again and for a moment just stand there and say ‘Wow!’” Inspired by the tribal dress of the Karen tribe in Thailand’s Golden Triangle—a region bordered by China, Laos and Myanmar—Angus combined her passion for pattern and textiles with a newfound fascination for the often overlooked (even maligned) insect. Using no endangered species, Angus creates her distinctive patterns without utilizing dyes or destroying natural resources.

Naturally electric blue, emerald green, pink, purple and red insects coalesce on the walls to create an immersive Victorian-era room that recalls an age of excitement, exploration and scientific discovery. Complementary small-scale dollhouses covered in beeswax are home to anthropomorphized insects that provoke viewers to revisit their own relationship with the eco-system.

For Angus, pattern is associated more with meaning than decoration. Her works call to mind themes of death, cultural association and ideas about collection. “ Although insects are common all over the world, insect collectors share the same passion, rigor and attention to display as many art collectors,” says director Suzanne Isken, “You will find that Angus’ work reflects the world’s infinite cache of unexpected beauty and diversity, a view that we at the Craft and Folk Art Museum hope to share with Los Angeles.”

Alastair Mackie

Alistair Mackie, Untitled (sphere) (2000-9) mouse skulls, glass, wood 26cm x 26cm x 26cm, image courtesy All Visual Arts, photography Tessa Angus

Ghada Amer

Le Salon Courbé, 2007, wallpaper, embroidered furniture, silk and wool carpet

Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec

As part of the London Design Festival, French designers Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec filled the Raphael Court of the V&A museum with fabric covered foam– 240 square meters of the gallery floor are covered with the Textile Field, to encourage visitors to lie down and look up at the Renaissance art.

An invitation to lascivious reverie. Our intention is to propose a different, casual approach to freely experience what can be a quite intimidating environment, such as a museum.

We conceived an expansive, coloured foam and textile piece with gentle inclinations to produce a sensual field on which to comfortably lounge while meditating on the surrounding Raphael Cartoons. Everyone can immerse into this temporary installation, for a minute, an hour or more, that is the idea. No efforts, no apprehension just contemplation.

Millie Brown

Tim Etchells

Art Flavours 2010

Art Flavours reflects Etchells' interest in the encounter between different discourses and cultural frames, exploring the potential for communication and miscommunication between them. Produced for Manifesta 7, in Italy, Art Flavours sees Etchells organising a meeting between the Italian critic and curator Roberto Pinto and the ice-cream maker Osvaldo Castellari. Pinto was entrusted with summarising art historical practice through four main categories: The Body, Memory, Spectacle and The Archive. Castellari's role was to translate the concepts into four ice-cream flavours. The video shows the conversation between the two men in which the critic/curator attempts to convey the art historical themes to the ice-cream master, who for his own part grows more and more sceptical, anxious and daunted by the task ahead of him. As Etchells comments: "Staging an encounter between popular confectionery and art practice, Art Flavours plays with the possibility (and impossibility) of translating the academic/specialised language of the art world into new edibles for the public."